Developers Corner

Kujata
San d'Oria
Level 8 Warrior
Level 8 Red Mage

Why cant it be both. In the real world ppl learn at different speeds according to what they're trying to learn and other things. So why cant an MMORPG do the same.

Why cant you make it to were every character is born with a diff learning curve for diff stuff depending on the learning curve he will learn stuff faster.

game - thats kinda the way some of the games do it now...if you are a warrior...you will learn your "strength based skills" faster then you would your int based skills...and vice versa if you are a mage or something along those lines.

Cyris - i kinda agree with gamesoft on this...why not both? however im not so sure about the learning curve...i kinda like the way that EQ and EQII did it with the lower levels being breeze levels and the higher you got the harder it was to level...granted EQ kinda fudged it up a bit with some of the expansions (I saw someone go from 57 to 62 in about 4 hours in PoT) but thats bound to happen...someone will ALWAYS find a cheaper, easier and more efficient way of leveling faster then the average joe - why you ask? well so he can put a leveling guide online and sell it to power gamers who just want to be at the top so they can laugh at all those leisure gamers just playing for fun. If you are working with a total of 100 levels...why not make the first 15-20 of them fairly easy...but increasing in difficulty as you go along...and just make them continually harder as you work up the tree...that makes people appreciate the time and effort they put into their characters more i think.

just my $0.02

pariah_cs

Yes I agree, I think Morrowwind had the right idea.  Either get rid of levels completely, or at least remove all level restrictions from items and make it a skill-based game.  The problem with having a level-based game is that then all the players join a group and camp in one spot and kill the same creatures over and over and over again because that is the fastest way to gain XP for characters of their level. 

If you adopted the Morrowwind model (or something like it), it wouldn't matter whether you were playing solo or in a group, and it would (almost) solve the problem of kill-stealing,  because you'd get the XP simply for fighting and using your skills rather than actually getting the kill. 

Generally speaking, however, I prefer leveling to be fast, because it just seems to make it more fun and exciting.  If it takes forever to level up, it just feels like a grind; like I'm doing a lot of stuff but not really making much progress.  In my opinion having slow leveling just makes the game seem more like work than like what it should be, which is a game. 

Part of the fun for me is just developing my character and getting new skills and abilities; things that differentiate me from other players.  Personally I think it shouldn't make too much difference what level you are; the characters who have been playing for awhile should have more skills and abilities, better equipment, etc.,  but not so much so that they blow all the lower level characters out of the water.

How about that...

The levelling could be made in much the same way Morrowind works: that is to say, the levels only apply to the skills, only the levelling in the skills is parabolic. That would mean that you would need only one success in a skill to raise from level Zero to Level One, but would need one success plus two successes to raise from level One to level Two, and so on and so forth, without any real limitation in level limit. Let's say that in a particular skill, you reach level Twenty, that means that you have actually 20% of chance to succeed in doing something. Reaching level One Hundred would mean succeeding every time (100% of chance of success), the following levels would also be interesting, since they would get you something like bigger possibilities to accomplish "critical hits" or special moves, or maybe open way to a new skill.

Imagine that you fight a long long time to reach level One Hundred in, say, "Long Sword Wielding" skill. What you gain after reaching this is a new skill called "Parry and Slash", which enables you to accomplish automatically a special counter-attack move if the normal attack is done in the right moment, but with a level zero attachment to it. What you need to do is continue practising "Long Sword Wielding" in order to accomplish some "Parry and Slash"es and raise this new skill.

This was an example that went along with swords. New moves can be imagined with axes, pikes, or even spellcasting. imagine what it would be if two spellcasters casted a spell in exactly the same moment: it could possibly end in a sort of "Duel of Will" where both would be locked in a sort of mental arm-wrestling, like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Even though all those skills should be accessible to anyone, since they only result in a character trying something new in a desperate moment, the levelling in them should only be made easier after the character reached level One Hundred in the basic competence. It does NOT mean that the levelling cannot take place before, but only that it is much easier to accomplish a special move when you are pretty sure to succeed any time at doing anything basic, than succeeding in creating a masterpiece as your first attempt. Anyone can be lucky once. Or twice. But being lucky everytime requires a very long aprenticeship...

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Originally posted by fournials

The levelling could be made in much the same way Morrowind works: that is to say, the levels only apply to the skills.

 

I completed morrowind and both exp packs a month ago... It's the greatest rpg i've ever played to be honest but i gotta say i didn't like the level system...

There was no problem in coping with it though, but experience points have worked for many years and will for many years to come i think.

And i LOVE plinging! anyone know of any games with 1000(+/-) character levels?